Seismic design and qualification for nuclear power plants. Safety guide

This Safety Guide was prepared under the IAEA's programme for safety standards for nuclear power plants. It supplements the Safety Requirements publication on Safety of Nuclear Power Plants. The present Safety Guide supersedes the Safety Guide on Seismic Design and Qualification for Nuclear Power Plants issued in 1992.1 A Safety Guide on seismic design was originally issued in 1979 as Safety Series No. 50-SG-S22, which extended the seismic considerations in relation to the siting of nuclear power plants into the areas of design and qualification. The present Safety Guide on seismic design makes reference to a Safety Guide 3 which gives guidance on how to determine the seismic hazard for a nuclear power plant at a given site. The Safety Guide on Seismic Design and Qualification for Nuclear Power Plants issued in 1992 was revised in 1999-2000 to incorporate new recommendations arising from recent operational experience, the analysis of damage caused to industrial facilities by recent earthquakes, and new scientific evidence on analytical approaches and their reliability. The text was also revised for compatibility with other revised Safety Guides as a consequence of a reorganization of the coverage of hazard evaluation issues and design issues (for foundations and superstructure). The purpose of this Safety Guide is to provide recommendations on a generally accepted way to design a nuclear power plant so that an earthquake motion at the site will not jeopardize the safety of the plant. It also gives guidance on a consistent application of methods and procedures for analysis, testing and qualification of structures and equipment so that they meet the safety requirements established in Safety Series No. 50-SG-D15, which covers the design of nuclear power plants, safety assessments for the design and the regulatory issues concerned with the licensing of plants. This Safety Guide is applicable to the design of land based stationary nuclear power plants with water cooled reactors to withstand site specific earthquakes regardless of the severity of the earthquake ground motion or the risk posed to individual plant items, provided that the recommendations of Ref. [Safety Series No. 50-SG-S2] concerning site exclusion criteria in relation to the hazard are met. It is recognized that simplified procedures may be available for some of the recommended methods of design and verification. The adequacy of such procedures for achieving the safety objective should be determined for the individual circumstances and should be adequately evaluated in terms of safety. It is recognized also that there is generally more than one possible engineering solution to a problem, and the approach adopted for one nuclear power plant may result in significant differences in design between that plant and another plant for which a different approach has been adopted. The present Safety Guide is based on the general practices in Member States. A recommended framework for the assessment of seismic safety in plant design is presented in Ref. [9]. Probabilistic assessment of the seismic capacity of a nuclear power plant is beyond the scope of this Safety Guide. This Safety Guide is intended to be applied to the design and construction of new nuclear power plants and in general it should not be applied in the seismic re-evaluation of existing plants. The assessment of the seismic margin of an existing plant is beyond the scope of this Safety Guide. Such an assessment should follow the generic procedures. The recommendations of this Safety Guide may also be applied to reactor types other than water cooled reactors in stationary nuclear power plants. However, engineering judgement should be used to assess their applicability, in accordance with the specific safety objectives defined for the plant type concerned. The technical recommendations in this Safety Guide concerning modelling and item qualification may also be applicable in part to the design of the plant against vibrational phenomena induced by sources other than earthquakes, such as explosions in industrial facilities, aircraft crashes, explosions in quarries or accidents with high speed rotating machinery. However, such an extension should be done with care and engineering judgement should be used, particularly in relation to the frequency of the induced vibration, its duration, its direction and the mechanism of its impact on the plant. It should also be noted that the design to resist such loads may take different forms, such as sacrificial walls, or may encompass different failure modes, such as scabbing or spalling for impact loads. These particular engineering provisions are not considered in this Safety Guide